MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Israel begins ground offensive in Lebanon

On the Israel-Lebanon border tanks, bulldozers and armoured personnel carriers knocked down a fence and barrelled over the border yesterday as some 2,000 Israeli forces stepped up a small-scale ground offensive into southern Lebanon to try to root out Hezbollah bunkers and destroy hidden rocket launchers.

With increased speculation that a major Israeli ground offensive could be in the works, the troops raced past a UN outpost and took control of Maroun al-Ras. The village was strategically important because it overlooked an area where Hezbollah had command posts, Maj. Gen. Benny Gantz said.

"We're talking about limited, pinpoint operations," said Brig. Gen. Ido Nehushtan. "Hezbollah has built quite an infrastructure near the border, and there are things you cannot find from the air."

Israeli warplanes struck Sidon early today (Sunday), targeting a religious building run by a Shiite Muslim cleric close to Hezbollah in their first hit inside the southern port city, currently swollen with refugees from fighting further south.

Also early today, a huge explosion reverberated across Beirut caused by another Israeli air raid on Hezbollah strongholds in the capital's southern suburbs. In northern Lebanon, Israeli jets bombed television and mobile phone transmission towers being used by Hezbollah for communications.

In Gaza, senior Palestinian officials said militant groups in the Gaza Strip agreed to stop firing missiles at Israel at midnight last night (2100 GMT), if Israel launches no new raids into Gaza. But Al Aqsa Martyrs's Brigades, Islamic Jihad and Hamas later denied that a ceasefire had been agreed. An Israeli military spokesman said it was aware the militants had met to discuss a possible ceasefire and that it would wait to see what develops.

On the diplomatic front, The Observer reported that Britain dramatically broke ranks with US President George W. Bush, when Foreign Office minister Ken Howells, speaking in Beirut, publicly criticized Israel's military tactics and urged the United States to "understand" the price being paid by ordinary Lebanese civilians.

In his weekly radio address Bush again defended Israel and administration officials said they recognize Syria is central to any plans to resolve the crisis in the Middle East, and they are seeking ways to peel Syria away from its alliance with Iran.

Israel bombing breaks humanitarian law: UN official

Israeli bombing of a Beirut neighborhood where Hizbollah had its headquarters has breached humanitarian law, a senior U.N. official said on Sunday.

"It is horrific. I did not know it was block after block of houses," Jan Egeland, the U.N. emergency relief coordinator, told reporters as he toured the shattered Haret Hreik district. "It makes it a violation of humanitarian law." "It's bigger, it's more extensive than I even could imagine," he said, surveying a pile of rubble. Israeli warplanes have pounded the area nearly every night since its war with Hizbollah began on July 12. It was last hit early on Sunday, said the few residents not to have fled the usually packed area.

Egeland said between half a million and a million people were in need of international assistance in Lebanon, but delivering aid required safe access. "So far Israel is not giving us access," he said. Egeland plans to travel to Israel on Tuesday to negotiate safe corridors by land, sea and air. He has estimated that $100 million is urgently needed to help avert a humanitarian crisis.

"There is definitely a humanitarian crisis unfolding in Lebanon," he said. Israel's bombardment of its northern neighbor has killed 359 people, mostly civilians "We are setting up a major relief operation but the violence has to stop," Egeland said, calling for a halt to the war. "The rockets going into Israel have to stop," he said. "The enormous bombardment that we have seen here with one block after another being leveled has to stop."

The Israeli government said the military was trying to be as precise as possible in its operations in Lebanon.

Egeland said the United Nations was planning to deliver aid using a fleet of trucks and by ship into Beirut and the southern city of Tire. "We're particularly worried for this area of Beirut and for the southern part of the country," he said. "There are wounded who do not get sufficient treatment. There are people who do not have safe drinking water. There are, first and foremost, tens of thousands of people who are now being besieged, or in areas (of) cross fire," he said. "It is costing too many lives and it will not lead to a solution in the south. There is no military solution to these things; it is only a political solution."

. The number of displaced people has grown to 600,000, according to the World Health Organization.